Husband David Finch writes 'The Journal of Best Practices' to save his marriage

Even if you're an ordinary "neurotypical," there are plenty of good reasons to read David Finch's "The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to Be a Better Husband."

One day when he was 30, Finch's wife, Kristen, sat him down near her computer and asked him a list of mystery questions: Do you tend to get so absorbed by your special interests that you forget or ignore everything else? Do you get very tired after socializing and need to regenerate alone? Do people comment on your unusual mannerisms and habits?

Those were just a few that elicited a resounding "yes!" from Finch. Altogether, he answered in the affirmative to 155 of 200 questions, some of which pinpointed his quirks with such eerie accuracy that he began to cry.

Finally, Kristen told him what was going on. This was a quiz for Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism -- often manifested in very bright people -- characterized by difficulty in social interaction and obsessive preoccupations and behavior.

Some people might have been disturbed by the implications, but Finch, an audio engineer in northern Illinois, was relieved. His five-year marriage was teetering on the brink of ruin, even though he and Kristen had been best friends for years. He seemed to show no regard for her needs or interests, had temper tantrums if his expectations for even minor events went awry, and his rituals -- an hourlong shower every morning -- left little room for family life.

The Asperger's diagnosis explained many of the ways he had been failing as a husband. So he decided to use his Asperger's power of hyperfocus to educate himself.

He watched TV talk shows to determine how to carry on an ordinary conversation. He studied Kristen's women's magazines to try to understand her interests. And every time the couple had a meltdown, he analyzed the incident as if it were the failure of a rocket launch, distilling lessons for better behavior on his part.

Much of the book is light and humorous, even though Finch is quite desperate to save his marriage. The combination of determined hilarity and sadness is often quite moving.

"A graphical representation of empathy," he writes, "might involve a Venn diagram -- two circles, one for the affective component and one for the cognitive, slightly overlapping, with me standing well outside both circles talking incessantly about the weather during a funeral."

Finch's book fascinates as it reveals the workings of a differently wired brain. Even so, many of his failings as a spouse seem very familiar, as if his autism is a magnification of the difficulty all of us have in connecting. Neurotypical or not.